8 ms·

Microsoft makes its case for Windows 10

35 points by filet 11y ago

Animats 11y ago
From the article: "Microsoft hopes to lure more people to use its new Windows 10 software on a variety of computers and gadgets by making it easy to use many of the same apps they’re already using on Apple or Android phones." That's a problem. I don't want to run phone apps on my desktop machine. I might want to be able to sync some things with my phone, but I have bigger jobs to do on the desktop machine than on the phone. If I didn't, why would I have a desktop machine?
- craigvn 11y ago
  Windows 10 will also run on phones and tablets so I think that is the audience for the apps, not the desktop.
  - higherpurpose 11y ago
    Microsoft tend to make a lot of bold claims, but they rarely follow through or in the same way they promised. We'll see how that bold plan actually fleshes out in reality.
    - joenathan 11y ago
      What are you talking about? What claims?
    - BinaryIdiot 11y ago
      Hmm I'm trying to think of the last claim I've heard Microsoft made that they didn't follow through on. They've been actually really great especially in the past few years. Care to elaborate?
      - Artemis2 11y ago
        They may not always deliver in time, but they are coming through.
- rodgerd 11y ago
  > I don't want to run phone apps on my desktop machine. In some cases I might agree, in others... why can I have a game that runs on my phone but not play it on my desktop?
  - Retra 11y ago
    If you run it in a browser, you already get all that, don't you?
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  > I don't want to run phone apps on my desktop machine. You won't. Microsoft's Android bridge is only going to work for the Windows Phone deployed version of Windows 10.
clumsysmurf 11y ago
I'm worried they will inadvertently pollute their store with garbage from Google Play. Most people use just a handful of quality apps. From my corner I hear a lot of grumbling from devs about Google's terrible Android SDK, poor documentation, buggy releases, flaky and buggy tools. "“Our goal is to make Windows 10 the most attractive development platform ever,” Microsoft executive Terry Myerson told an audience" I never felt that was Google's priority with Android. Its just that terrible. Developers not strictly of the F/OSS mindset would probably try Windows development just for some new scenery, if their tooling was that great and they had more market share.
- edgyswingset 11y ago
  I think the biggest issue is inertia. Most everyone I speak with knows that the toolset for developing on Windows is superior to that of Android (language, IDE, testing, etc), but it's no simple task to be Windows-centric, shell out the cash for licenses, and convince a lot of people to abandon the language and ecosystem they already know for a new one.
  - bitmapbrother 11y ago
    Hardly. IntelliJ is far superior to that bloated IDE they call Visual Studio. 12+ gigabytes to install an IDE is just insane.
- bad_user 11y ago
  I'm an Android user and I don't feel that Google Play is in the bad shape that you're describing. Quite the contrary, I believe that it's the best app store right now. And I also own a Nokia Lumia, an iPhone and an iPad, so I could make lots of comparisons. Android as a platform is also the best. Maybe I'm biased, Android being the first platform I tried my hand at - but that's also because Android's SDK is the only one available on Linux and that's what I was using back then. And that's a virtue. > Developers not strictly of the F/OSS mindset would probably try Windows development... Well, that's one thing that makes Android great - the availability of great open-source apps for it, like Firefox or VLC. That's one thing setting it apart from iOS. Microsoft copied iOS, but that was a terribly bad decision, because introducing a tightly controlled proprietary platform as a third choice is never going to fly in a market in which Android is number 1.
ams6110 11y ago
I just can't imagine ever going back to Windows.
- BF179580656B 11y ago
  I guess you lack imagination.
  - jay_kyburz 11y ago
    A few months ago I bought a surface 3 pro for testing. For the first week or so I was quite impressed by the metro stuff. Looks nice, works well with touch. I was very disappointed that there are no metro interfaces for browsing files or basic things like looking at a text file. Its really disappointing to have to drop down into the old, messy, ugly windows. Metro is just not finished and its a shame.
taylorlapeyre 11y ago
Until Windows supports and supplies bash + the gnu core utils by default, they will have a hard time getting me to switch.
- m3talridl3y 11y ago
  I'd live to see Bash, in a terminal emulator that isn't terrible, with a working .bashrc file, on windows. Sadly they just don't get it.
  - fphhotchips 11y ago
    What's your criteria for a terminal emulator that isn't terrible? I have cygwin running bash with a working .bashrc file in MintTTY and that seems ok?
- rdtsc 11y ago
  Protip: Install Git for windows. Then instead of regular cmd console, you can right click on the folder and use "Git bash". Not full on bash, but you get a better console with ssh, scp and a few other utilities.
  - hetman 11y ago
    You're probably better off installing standalone MSYS with something like mingw-get-installer which also gives you a convenient GUI for installing other common GNU/Unix utilities (and a somewhat crappy command line package manager). It even gives you a half decent terminal (in the form of mintty). I tend to do most of my windows scripting using bash cause it's just less effort that way. Still, it's not a first class citizen like on Linux, and Microsoft seems to be going down it's own path with powershell (which at best gives a nod to the existence of things like bash, but not a lot more).
    - rdtsc 11y ago
      I went off the fact that most people caring about some command line on Windows likely also installed Git on it. In that case it is like getting it for free.
jamessteininger 11y ago
What was wrong with the name Spartan for their new browser? I'm not sure how I feel about Edge...
- mburns 11y ago
  Edge starts with an 'e' so it can still use a similar logo to Internet Explorer, which is significant.
- sjwright 11y ago
  I agree Spartan would have been the cooler name, but Edge is a pretty cool name too. The browser field is full of weird and wacky names (consider Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome; that's four weird words right there) but we get used to them extremely quickly.
zaroth 11y ago
Every time I sit down in front of Win8 I feel like my head is going to explode. Earlier this evening I was on the phone trying to walk a tech-challenged colleague through removing an existing account in 'Mail'. He had switched mail clients, and the new client would work once and then fail for hours, and then work once, etc. It hit me that Windows 'Mail' was trying to login with an old password, and must be causing his account to lock out. Of course he didn't know his current mail password either, so the best option was to just delete the account from Windows Mail. It took several minutes just to explain how to get into 'Settings'. Then after finally selecting an account, he couldn't figure out that the right-hand panel with the settings actually scrolled. Then when he clicked 'Remove Account' and it gave a cryptic error about how the account couldn't be deleted, because it was his "Microsoft Login" account even though it looked like the work email account. Finally we found the right account and removed it. Almost 30 minutes of my life lost to something which should been about 5 clicks max. I feel like literally everything about Win8 was designed as the complete opposite to how I would want my computer to actually function. First, the idea that Microsoft is sync'ing settings between machines in ways that is extremely difficult or impossible to turn off is worse than creepy, it feels like a back door. Then every time an app comes up as "Metro" styled or whatever, it seems incredibly wasteful, out-of-place and practically ridiculous looking. No, thank you, I don't want my 4K monitor taken over by a full screen of purple and a tiny bit of text at the top. Then there are things like 'Camera' app which when it fails simply says 'Camera cannot start' and give you absolutely nothing to do about it (all the while Skype video-conferencing is working perfectly). It's like Microsoft thought, well most of our users don't even know how to use a computer, so lets make an operating system for them! I must have some sort of PTSD from it because I often end up loudly cursing Microsoft's existence any time I need to even approach a Win8 machine. In short, if Microsoft is making a "case" for Windows 10 to anyone like me, it better look fuck all like Win8. Yet I am convinced Microsoft still completely does not get it. My desktop is not my phone, and I don't want to run smartphone apps on my desktop. There are incredible opportunities for tying together the computing experience between desktops and phones, but unifying the user interface is just dead wrong. It's like the whole thing is just completely lost in translation. A unified experience does not mean a unified GUI! How can they get this so wrong even after 5 years of staring their failure in the face?
- 11y ago
shmerl 11y ago
MS grip on the desktop market needs to be weakened. So far they still enjoy barely disputed control over common manufacturers who enforce Windows tax and don't let users buy computers with other operating systems.
616c 11y ago
How the hell did the Daily Star make it to the front page of HN?

35 points by filet 11y ago

From the article: "Microsoft hopes to lure more people to use its new Windows 10 software on a variety of computers and gadgets by making it easy to use many of the same apps they’re already using on Apple or Android phones." That's a problem. I don't want to run phone apps on my desktop machine. I might want to be able to sync some things with my phone, but I have bigger jobs to do on the desktop machine than on the phone. If I didn't, why would I have a desktop machine?

craigvn 11y ago
Windows 10 will also run on phones and tablets so I think that is the audience for the apps, not the desktop.
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  Microsoft tend to make a lot of bold claims, but they rarely follow through or in the same way they promised. We'll see how that bold plan actually fleshes out in reality.
  - joenathan 11y ago
    What are you talking about? What claims?
  - BinaryIdiot 11y ago
    Hmm I'm trying to think of the last claim I've heard Microsoft made that they didn't follow through on. They've been actually really great especially in the past few years. Care to elaborate?
    - Artemis2 11y ago
      They may not always deliver in time, but they are coming through.
rodgerd 11y ago
> I don't want to run phone apps on my desktop machine. In some cases I might agree, in others... why can I have a game that runs on my phone but not play it on my desktop?
- Retra 11y ago
  If you run it in a browser, you already get all that, don't you?
BinaryIdiot 11y ago
> I don't want to run phone apps on my desktop machine. You won't. Microsoft's Android bridge is only going to work for the Windows Phone deployed version of Windows 10.

clumsysmurf 11y ago

I'm worried they will inadvertently pollute their store with garbage from Google Play. Most people use just a handful of quality apps. From my corner I hear a lot of grumbling from devs about Google's terrible Android SDK, poor documentation, buggy releases, flaky and buggy tools. "“Our goal is to make Windows 10 the most attractive development platform ever,” Microsoft executive Terry Myerson told an audience" I never felt that was Google's priority with Android. Its just that terrible. Developers not strictly of the F/OSS mindset would probably try Windows development just for some new scenery, if their tooling was that great and they had more market share.

edgyswingset 11y ago
I think the biggest issue is inertia. Most everyone I speak with knows that the toolset for developing on Windows is superior to that of Android (language, IDE, testing, etc), but it's no simple task to be Windows-centric, shell out the cash for licenses, and convince a lot of people to abandon the language and ecosystem they already know for a new one.
- bitmapbrother 11y ago
  Hardly. IntelliJ is far superior to that bloated IDE they call Visual Studio. 12+ gigabytes to install an IDE is just insane.
bad_user 11y ago
I'm an Android user and I don't feel that Google Play is in the bad shape that you're describing. Quite the contrary, I believe that it's the best app store right now. And I also own a Nokia Lumia, an iPhone and an iPad, so I could make lots of comparisons. Android as a platform is also the best. Maybe I'm biased, Android being the first platform I tried my hand at - but that's also because Android's SDK is the only one available on Linux and that's what I was using back then. And that's a virtue. > Developers not strictly of the F/OSS mindset would probably try Windows development... Well, that's one thing that makes Android great - the availability of great open-source apps for it, like Firefox or VLC. That's one thing setting it apart from iOS. Microsoft copied iOS, but that was a terribly bad decision, because introducing a tightly controlled proprietary platform as a third choice is never going to fly in a market in which Android is number 1.

ams6110 11y ago

I just can't imagine ever going back to Windows.

BF179580656B 11y ago
I guess you lack imagination.
- jay_kyburz 11y ago
  A few months ago I bought a surface 3 pro for testing. For the first week or so I was quite impressed by the metro stuff. Looks nice, works well with touch. I was very disappointed that there are no metro interfaces for browsing files or basic things like looking at a text file. Its really disappointing to have to drop down into the old, messy, ugly windows. Metro is just not finished and its a shame.

taylorlapeyre 11y ago

Until Windows supports and supplies bash + the gnu core utils by default, they will have a hard time getting me to switch.

m3talridl3y 11y ago
I'd live to see Bash, in a terminal emulator that isn't terrible, with a working .bashrc file, on windows. Sadly they just don't get it.
- fphhotchips 11y ago
  What's your criteria for a terminal emulator that isn't terrible? I have cygwin running bash with a working .bashrc file in MintTTY and that seems ok?
rdtsc 11y ago
Protip: Install Git for windows. Then instead of regular cmd console, you can right click on the folder and use "Git bash". Not full on bash, but you get a better console with ssh, scp and a few other utilities.
- hetman 11y ago
  You're probably better off installing standalone MSYS with something like mingw-get-installer which also gives you a convenient GUI for installing other common GNU/Unix utilities (and a somewhat crappy command line package manager). It even gives you a half decent terminal (in the form of mintty). I tend to do most of my windows scripting using bash cause it's just less effort that way. Still, it's not a first class citizen like on Linux, and Microsoft seems to be going down it's own path with powershell (which at best gives a nod to the existence of things like bash, but not a lot more).
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    I went off the fact that most people caring about some command line on Windows likely also installed Git on it. In that case it is like getting it for free.

jamessteininger 11y ago

What was wrong with the name Spartan for their new browser? I'm not sure how I feel about Edge...

mburns 11y ago
Edge starts with an 'e' so it can still use a similar logo to Internet Explorer, which is significant.
sjwright 11y ago
I agree Spartan would have been the cooler name, but Edge is a pretty cool name too. The browser field is full of weird and wacky names (consider Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome; that's four weird words right there) but we get used to them extremely quickly.

zaroth 11y ago

Every time I sit down in front of Win8 I feel like my head is going to explode. Earlier this evening I was on the phone trying to walk a tech-challenged colleague through removing an existing account in 'Mail'. He had switched mail clients, and the new client would work once and then fail for hours, and then work once, etc. It hit me that Windows 'Mail' was trying to login with an old password, and must be causing his account to lock out. Of course he didn't know his current mail password either, so the best option was to just delete the account from Windows Mail. It took several minutes just to explain how to get into 'Settings'. Then after finally selecting an account, he couldn't figure out that the right-hand panel with the settings actually scrolled. Then when he clicked 'Remove Account' and it gave a cryptic error about how the account couldn't be deleted, because it was his "Microsoft Login" account even though it looked like the work email account. Finally we found the right account and removed it. Almost 30 minutes of my life lost to something which should been about 5 clicks max. I feel like literally everything about Win8 was designed as the complete opposite to how I would want my computer to actually function. First, the idea that Microsoft is sync'ing settings between machines in ways that is extremely difficult or impossible to turn off is worse than creepy, it feels like a back door. Then every time an app comes up as "Metro" styled or whatever, it seems incredibly wasteful, out-of-place and practically ridiculous looking. No, thank you, I don't want my 4K monitor taken over by a full screen of purple and a tiny bit of text at the top. Then there are things like 'Camera' app which when it fails simply says 'Camera cannot start' and give you absolutely nothing to do about it (all the while Skype video-conferencing is working perfectly). It's like Microsoft thought, well most of our users don't even know how to use a computer, so lets make an operating system for them! I must have some sort of PTSD from it because I often end up loudly cursing Microsoft's existence any time I need to even approach a Win8 machine. In short, if Microsoft is making a "case" for Windows 10 to anyone like me, it better look fuck all like Win8. Yet I am convinced Microsoft still completely does not get it. My desktop is not my phone, and I don't want to run smartphone apps on my desktop. There are incredible opportunities for tying together the computing experience between desktops and phones, but unifying the user interface is just dead wrong. It's like the whole thing is just completely lost in translation. A unified experience does not mean a unified GUI! How can they get this so wrong even after 5 years of staring their failure in the face?

11y ago

shmerl 11y ago

MS grip on the desktop market needs to be weakened. So far they still enjoy barely disputed control over common manufacturers who enforce Windows tax and don't let users buy computers with other operating systems.

616c 11y ago

How the hell did the Daily Star make it to the front page of HN?